Thor: Love and Thunder Reportedly Given Run Time Mandate

Thor: Love and Thunder has officially wrapped up its first weekend in theaters, tallying a sizable $302 million at the global box office. Now days after its release, the Taika Waititi picture is still dominating social chatter, largely due to its divisive nature. Fans and critics alike are split on their reception to the film, with many criticizing the film’s lack of focus and clarity.

As it turns out, a large part of that may be because Marvel Studios reportedly told Waititi to keep the film under two hours. The latest report comes from The Ringer-Verse’s Joanna Robinson, who says the filmmaker was told to keep the film short.

“Taika having a blank check on this is absolutely not the case. He got more leeway than he got with Ragnarok, but there was a mandate to bring this movie in under two hours. This comes in under two hours and they cut a ton of stuff out of this movie,” Robinson said on the latest episode of House of R.

She added, “Taika is on record as not being in director’s cuts. We know Jeff Goldblum, Peter Dinklage, Lena Headey [were supposed to appear] and Simon Russell Beale appeared as Dionysus and had like two lines in this movie but has an above-the-line credit, so he was definitely supposed to be in this more. Gorr was definitely supposed to come in and kill a bunch of other people.”

Earlier this month, Waititi said director’s cuts “suck,” adding that his cut would only add a couple of jokes.

“I’ve been thinking about director’s cuts. I watch director’s cuts of a lot of other directors. They suck. Director’s cuts are not good. Directors need to be controlled sometimes and if I was to say, ‘ah you wanna watch my director’s cut? It’s four and a half hours long!’ It’s not good, at four and a half hours. There’s a lot of cup-of-tea breaks in there, you don’t even have to pause it,” Waititi explained to NME.

He added, “I’d say my cut would probably have a few more jokes in there. There might be a couple of deleted scenes but as I always say, a scene is deleted because it’s not good enough to be in the film. I think the deleted scenes section on the DVD, not that they use them anymore, should just be a list of the scenes and no links so you can’t click on them!”

Taika Waititi, who directed Thor: Ragnarok, returns to direct Thor: Love and Thunder. He also co-wrote the film’s screenplay with Jennifer Kaytin Robinson. The film stars Chris Hemsworth, Tessa Thompson, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, Chris Pratt, Jaimie Alexander, Pom Klementieff, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Sean Gunn, and Vin Diesel.

Thor: Love and Thunder is now in theaters.

What’d you think Thor: Love and Thunder? Let us know your thoughts either in the comments section or by hitting our writer @AdamBarnhardt up on Twitter to chat all things MCU!